Create a project and import a clip

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Welcome to this series of tutorials designed to teach you basic editing skills with Adobe Premiere Pro CC. This tutorial introduces you to the Premiere Pro workspace and shows you how to create new projects.

When you first start Adobe Premiere Pro CC this is what you're going to see. This is the Start screen. And there are a couple of options on here. The two that we're really interested in are the option to create a New Project... and the option to open an existing project. A Premiere Pro project file is a file like any other. All of your creative decisions are going to be stored in that file. We can open one of these up by double clicking on them but I'm going to show you from inside the Start screen first of all. I'm just going to click back into Premiere Pro CC and I'm going to click on Open Project... You should be familiar with this dialog. This is in Windows of course. This is Windows Explorer and if we were on Mac OS this would be a Finder dialog. It's just going to allow us to open a file. So, I'm going to select this 01_01 Create a project.prproj and I'm going to click Open. And here we are now in Premiere Pro CC looking at this project. There's not much going on right now. Over at the bottom right here we've got the Timeline panel. I'm just going to click a little earlier in the sequence here, where you can see we've got a number of clips all lined up ready to make a program. And when I do that at the top right in this Program monitor, you can see this is the Program monitor, it's showing us our Master Sequence, we get the visuals from that series of clips. Another important panel for you to be familiar with is this one down at the bottom left. This is the Project panel. And you see every panel has its name at the top left-hand corner. This is the Project panel and it's showing me the contents of the project. I've just opened 01_01 Create a project. Inside of this panel I've got something that looks a bit like a folder. It's a bin in Premiere Pro CC and in that bin I've got some clips. If I double click to open one of these you can see it opens in this Source monitor at the top left corner. This is for previewing the videos that you've got in your project, you can play them back and just have a look and see if you want to use them or not and over on the right here the Program monitor is for looking at the sequence that you're building. That's the film that you're making if you like. Okay, so that's how to open a project. I'm just going to go to the File menu and I'm going to choose Close Project. And Premiere Pro CC is inviting me to Save changes, there aren't any really. But you'll notice up at the top here next to the project name it's quite useful because we've got the location of the project as well. I'm on a Windows machine, so this is C Drive rather than a System Drive or another kind of plugged-in drive. I've got this little asterisk next to the name that tells me that some kind of change has happened. That change might just be that I'm looking at a different part of the project. So, I'm not too concerned and I'm going to click No. Back on the Start screen this time I'm going to click New Project... I'm going to call this First project and if I click Browse... we get a familiar browse dialog where we can choose the location for the new project file. You could always move it later on of course but I'm happy with it being here in my Media folder. So, I'll choose Select Folder. I'm not worried about the rest of the options for now. I'm just going to click OK and here we are in an empty Premiere Pro CC project. The first thing we're going to want to do is get some media in, get some video files into the project. So, I'm going to go to the Media Browser. And the Media Browser is going to allow me to look through the contents of my storage to find the clips, the video files, the photos and graphics and so on that I want to use in my project. I'm going to browse into the Media Files folder and I'm not going to pay too much attention right now but I'm going to select some of these clips. I'm just going to scroll down here and actually I think I'm pretty much happy to have all of this. So, I'm going to press in this case Ctrl + A that would be Command A on Mac OS to select everything here. I can make individual selections if I like but I'm happy to have all of these and I'm going to right click on any of them and I'm going to choose Import. And there we are. Now inside our Project panel we've got a list of clips. These are pieces of video and if I double click on any of these they open up in the Source monitor for me to take a look and decide if I want to use them. So, now we have a project file with some media imported and we're ready to get started reviewing our footage and editing clips together. For now, though I'm going to go to the File menu again and I'm going to choose Close Project. I will save the changes and we're back to the Start screen. So, that's opening an existing project, creating a new one and importing some media ready for you to start working in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

What you learned: Create a project

Open a Premiere Pro project file by double-clicking it, or click Open Project in the Start screen and select a file.

To create a new project file, click New Project in the Start screen. Choose a name, browse to choose a location for the project file, and click OK.

To import media files using the Media Browser panel, browse to the files you’d like to import, select the clips you want to work with in Premiere Pro, right-click one of the selected clips, and choose Import. Once the media is imported, you’re ready to edit.

As you edit, be sure to save your work (choose File > Save) periodically.

To close your project, choose File > Close Project.

Workspace overview

Understand the basic user interface to become familiar with Premiere Pro.

It's helpful to understand the key Adobe Premiere Pro CC interface design elements as this will make it easier to explore the application and learn new features. Let's begin by opening an existing project. I'm going to double click here on this 01_02 Interface overview.prproj and double clicking it, is going to open the project in Premiere Pro CC. The first thing I am going to do here is make sure I'm in the Editing workspace. Now a workspace is really just a preset layout for the application. I'm going to move things around a little bit here. I've got a number of different panels that I can work with. I'm just going to shift these around in a really noticeable way so that it's easy for you to see the difference. And right at the top of the screen I've got this word Editing which is the Editing workspace. We've got a number of different workspaces for different purposes, Color, Work, Effects, Audio and so on. Now let's say I know that this workspace is wrong. I'm going to click on this menu right next to the word Editing and I'm going to choose Reset to Saved Layout. That's going to put things back the way they were. I recommend that you go through this process at the beginning of every workflow that you follow, every tutorial that you watch, every book that you read on how to use Premiere Pro CC because you'll find that pretty much all of the lessons that you see will use the default layout so that people can follow along. Now on the subject of panels I want to draw your attention to this blue highlight outline. Right now, the Timeline panel is active, that's where you build sequences and make movies in Premiere Pro CC. Now if I click the bottom left the Project panel is active. Depending on the active panel you'll find that you get different menu options and things will work a little bit differently in Premiere Pro CC. So, it's important to know which panel is active before you begin. Just keep an eye out for that blue outline. Each panel has a name at the top of it, right now I'm in the Project panel. Next to the name you'll find a panel menu just like the one we used a moment ago to reset our workspace. This menu is called the Panel menu and it gives you options that relate specifically to that panel. It's important to be clear about which kind of menu you're looking in. Here I'm looking in the Panel menu. But you'll notice for example on the Timeline there's a Wrench icon for what's called a Settings menu. In both cases, you're going to see options that relate specifically to the panel you're clicking on. Where you see the name of a panel, in this case the Project panel, it's referred to as a tab. So here we've got the tab for the Project panel, now I'm clicking on the tab for the Media Browser. Again, it's good to know the name of that because if you look up tutorials you'll find that these different name headings are referred to as tabs and now you'll know where you're looking. We also have a right-click menu. If I right-click on one of these items in the sequence over in the Timeline panel you can see I've got a number of options that relate specifically to that clip. And you might already be able to see that selection is extremely important in Premiere Pro CC. I'm getting options for that clip not the one next to it. Every panel in Adobe Premiere Pro CC is listed in the Window menu. So, if you're ever hunting for a panel don't worry about it just look for it on this menu and it'll come up when you select it. Here for example I'm choosing the Media Browser. And now the Media Browser has come to the front even though it was kind of already displayed in the interface it was hidden behind the Project panel which I'm going to go back to right now. So now I'm going to go to the File menu, I'm going to choose Close Project. And that's an overview of the key design elements in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

What you learned: Panels and workspaces

Panels: Each panel has a specific purpose. You can resize or reposition them. All panels are accessible in the Window menu.

Workspaces: Preset layouts with panels displayed that are useful for particular tasks, such as editing video or working on audio. To reset a workspace, choose Window > Workspace > Reset to Saved Layout.

Blue highlight: Only one panel at a time will have a blue highlight, indicating that it is the active panel.

Import media

When you import videos into Premiere Pro, they appear as clips (shortcuts to your media files) in the Project panel.

For this lesson, I'm working with project 01_03 Import media.prproj. And you can find that project file with the media files associated with this lesson. You can just double-click to open it up. Your projects might include video, music, voiceover, photos, graphics, and animation files. Let's import some video clips and learn about the way they're linked to your project file. I am going into the Media Browser panel and I'm just going to browse for our media and go into this Media Files folder. On the left you've got all of the folders on your computer. On the right, you're seeing the contents of the folders you select. Right now, I'm here in the Media Files folder, the same one we looked at just now. If I double click on one of these, I'm going to double click on this clip right here it'll open in the Source monitor. And once it's here I can press Play if I want or I can take this blue so-called Play head and drag to a different section of the video. Notice I don't have to click on the Play head to move it. I can just click where I want it to go. I'm going to select a few of these clips, I'm just going to click on the first one up here and scroll down a bit and I'm going to hold the Shift key down to make a list selection and get six clips. I'm going to right click on any one of the selected clips and choose Import and they'll appear in my Project panel. Importing a clip creates what's called a master clip in Premiere Pro CC which is really a shortcut to the media file. I'm just going to click on the background of the Project panel to deselect these clips. And you can see that I'm in list view and I've got some information about them, I've got the frame rate and so on, that's the number of frames per second for these video clips. I can also switch to the Icon View by clicking this button at the bottom left hand corner. And this is perhaps a little bit more useful. I've now got the visuals from the clips. Premiere Pro CC knows the location of the media files that clips link to. And if the media moves you'll need to tell Premiere Pro CC where it is. Within the project file we can organize our clips using special folders called bins. And this is a term used originally by film editors and it's stuck when editors switched to nonlinear editing. You can create a bin by clicking this button at the bottom right corner of the Project panel. I'm going to call this Shots. I'm clicking away to apply the name and if I double-click it'll open in its own frame. You'll notice that the Bin has exactly the same options that the Project panel has. There's a shortcut to doing this as well. I'm going to select three of these clips. I’m just clicking on the first one and I'm holding the Shift key and clicking on the last and I'm going to drag these three clips onto that same New Bin button. Those clips have now been put into the Bin and I'll call this one Shots 2, you can see the name is already highlighted. And if I double click you can see I've now got my Bin called Shots 2 with those clips in it. I'll just drag this so you can see the Shots Bin as well. You can even put bins in bins. So now I'm going to select both of these Bins, I'm holding the Shift key down again and I'm going to drag them both on to the New Bin button and I'm going to call that new Bin Media. And now if I double click to open this up you can see it's a Bin with two Bins in it. So, it's a bit like folders in Windows or Mac OS. Speaking of folders, if I toggle back over to our media and I'm going to just browse up to the main media folder, I'm going to rename our Media Files folder something different, in fact I'll just put the word different in here. That changes the location of the clips. Of course, I've renamed the folder containing them. So, if I go back to Premiere Pro CC right away all of the clips get these question marks, they go offline and you probably just saw there Premiere Pro CC found the media again and relinked to it. If I double click on one of these up it comes. I'm just going to close some of these Bins because they're getting in the way in my interface. And there it is. I'm just going to go back and I'll undo, I'm pressing Ctrl+Z here on Windows that'll be Command+Z on Mac OS, go back into Premiere Pro CC and there. It just flashed up and found the media again. It's possible Premiere Pro CC will ask you where one of the clips are if you've really moved them to a different location on your computer. If that happens you can just browse to the first clip that's missing and Premiere Pro CC will find the rest. Notice as well, if I right click on one of these clips I can choose Reveal in Explorer... This is Reveal in Finder in Mac OS. And there's the clip highlighted. If I go back into Premiere Pro CC and just click on the name of this clip I'm just clicking and then clicking again, let's say I call this Trees, I'm clicking away to apply the name. I'm going to toggle back to the media and you'll see that the filename hasn't changed. Remember the clips inside of Premiere Pro CC really are just links to the media files, they are not the media files themselves. So, renaming the shortcut doesn't change the media file. So, that's an overview of importing media into your project, ready to edit in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

What you learned: Import media

Use the Media Browser panel to locate and import your media files. To preview a video in the Source Monitor, double-click it. To import media files, select them and right-click on them to choose Import.

Bins allow you to organize your clips in the same way that you might organize files in folders on your computer. To create a new bin, click the New Bin button in the Project panel.

Build a sequence

Most of the creative work in Premiere Pro happens when you build a sequence of clips that play, one after another. You’ll need to create a sequence before you can add clips to it.

For this lesson, I'm working with a project file called 01_04 Build a sequence.prproj. And you can find that with the media included with this lesson, just double click on the project file to open it. Clips in the Project panel are ready to be combined creatively by adding them to a sequence. Now a sequence is a container and as you may be able to tell from the name clips added to a sequence are organized into a series of items that will play one after another. And let's create one now. This is a simple project with just three clips. I'll switch this to the Icon View so you can see the contents of them. The clips are already imported and you can see the Timeline panel says Drop media here to create sequence. So, let's do that. I'm going to drag on the blank space of the Project panel to lasso across these three clips, so that all three are selected and I'm going to drag them into the Timeline panel. They've been added in the order I selected them one after another with time going from left to right. I'm just going to click and drag up here at the far left of the Timeline panel, so you can see the thumbnails for the clips. This area in the Timeline panel is called the Track Header. At the top here, you can see some numbers indicating the passage of time. And if I click on those numbers you can see the blue Play head here moves to where I click. The Play head indicates the frame that I'm going to be looking at. I can play the contents of my sequence by clicking the Play button on the Program monitor. That becomes a Stop button. So, you can click that to stop playback too. You can also use the Spacebar just like this. As the Play head moves across a cut you'll see that we transition from one clip to another. And you can also drag the Play head across the sequence, so here... I'm moving quite quickly through the content. When this sequence was created which happened when I dragged the clips into the Timeline panel it also appeared in the Project panel. It has the same name as the first clip selected. And you'll notice that there's a little icon. I'm going to click away to deselect it. There's a different icon for sequences as you'll see on clips, just at the bottom right hand corner of the thumbnail. If I go to the List View you can see the icons a little bit more clearly. I'm going to click on the name for this just once to select and once again to highlight the text and I'm going to call it First Sequence. I'll just click away to apply that. Now you can have as many sequences as you like. The professional editors sometimes combine sequences in creative ways. I want to draw your attention, in the Timeline panel over here on the right to these thin lines dividing sections of the Timeline panel, each of these is a track you can put clips on to. I've put clips here onto Video 1 and you can see we've got V1, V2, V3 and so on, we've got A1, A2, A3 for audio. You can just about make out the waveforms for these clips as well. That's showing how loud the audio is that's associated with these particular video clips. All the audio tracks play together but video tracks play one above the other. So, if you had a title or graphic you would put that on an upper video track maybe V2 or V3 to play in front of a lower track. Video and audio clips are separate in the Timeline panel. But because these clips came together when you click on the video it selects the Audio 2 and vice-versa. If I want to remove a clip I can just make sure it's selected by single clicking and hit the Delete key and it's gone. I'm going to undo that with Ctrl+Z on Windows, that'll be Command+Z on Mac OS. If I want to remove this clip without leaving a gap I can hold the Shift key while I press Delete. I'm going to go back to the Icon View in the Project panel and find that clip again, here it is and drag it onto the Timeline. And you'll notice when I do it snaps into position. See as I drag there it jumps into position just at the end of the series, releasing the mouse button places the clip. Another way to create a new sequence is to select a number of clips in the Project panel here, I'm holding the Shift key down to select all three of these clips again and I'm going to right click and I'm going to choose New Sequence from Clip. It has the same effect as dragging the clips into an empty Timeline panel. And right away you can see the new sequence has been created right here in the Project panel. So that's how you build a new sequence, add and remove clips in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

What you learned: Build a sequence

When you create a sequence, it appears in the Project panel along with your clips. You can create as many sequences as you want in the same project.

To create a new sequence, drag one or more clips into the empty Timeline panel, or select one or more clips in the Project panel, right-click on the selection and choose New Sequence from Clip.

Add more clips by dragging them into the Timeline panel.

To remove a clip from the sequence, select it and press Backspace (Windows) or Delete (macOS). If you select clips and press Shift+Delete (Windows) or Shift+fn+Delete (macOS), they will be removed without leaving a gap in the sequence.